Essays on trans, intersex, cis and other persons and topics from a trans perspective.......All human life is here.

This site is the most comprehensive on the web devoted to trans history and biography. Well over 1200 persons worthy of note, both famous and obscure, are discussed in detail, and many more are mentioned in passing - especially in the year-end summaries (see links in right sidebar.)

There is a detailedIndexarranged by vocation, doctor, activist group etc.

In addition to this most articles have one or more labels at the bottom. Click one to go to similar persons. There is a full list of labels at the bottom of the page. There is also a search box at the top left. Enjoy exploring!

26 November 2013

Peter Henderson was keen on radios and electronics even as a child. His female name was Caroline, and frequently insisted that this was who she really was. She tried to stay with the girls at school, and even attempted to join the brownies. She refused to have her hair cut and even before the Beatles was the only boy in her class with long hair.

In 1964 she adapted her radio to be able to receive the pirate Radio Caroline despite living in southern England beyond its normal reach, and gladly joined the ‘Caroline Club’.

She deliberately failed her 11-plus exams because the grammar schools in her area were gender segregated, while the secondary modern school was mixed gender.

In the late 1960s Caroline worked in pirate radio broadcasting on and off the Isle of Wight. She dressed as a hippy chick and on the air was Anne Kennedy, the only female on the station. During a police raid she and four others escaped in that the police found four men and a boy when they they looking for several men and a woman.

At age 16, under pressure from his father, Peter joined the Royal Signals. He told the army psychologist that he felt that he was really a woman but it was decided that he was not trying hard enough to be a man. Peter married a woman, and they had one son. He left the army after three years, but remained an active life member of the Royal Signals Associations (RSA).

Peter transitioned to Petra in 1998, with surgery in Frankfurt am Main. After some years of struggle and negotiation with the British Government, the then Lord Chancellor, Derry Irvine, intervened and Petra was legally recognized as female, even though she had refused to divorce her wife of 26 years. She had threatened to go to the European Court of Human Rights and the Government wished to keep her out of the newspapers. It was insisted that this was a one-off exemption and did not set a precedent.

There were some other similar one-offs, such as the UK citizen in Paris who was able to obtain a similar result with Petra's assistance, and Press for Change was able to use them in its negotiation for the Gender Recognition Act of 2004. Afterwards Petra did divorce her wife and has lost contact with her. She lives in the Frankfurt region, and is still active in the Royal Signals Association.

She spoke up in support of soldier Joanne Wingate during her trials in 2003, and was featured in Sixth Sense, the UK Army’s daily newspaper.

Her Wikipedia page was deleted in 2008. Petra was active in the now defunct TransHistory Yahoo Group, and currently in the EuroTransgender group, and various electronics communications groups.

*Not the footballer nor the cricketer, not Baron Henderson.

Petra Henderson. “What is it Like to be a Transsexual?”. Published in various magazines and e-zines in December 1998 and January 1999. Republished Organisation Intersex International. 2002.

Announcement re year-end review

At the end of each year from 2008 to 2015 I did a year-end review of trans persons and events around the world. Each year it became bigger, and it has really become too big a task for one person. I hereby give notice that I will not be doing such a year-end review this year, or in future.

I will do some bits, especially the list of new books, but not the comprehensive survey that I have previously done.

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About Zagria

I have a social science degree. I spent several years in the 70s doing Gay Lib counselling, and moved on to organizing trans groups. I was rejected by the Clarke Institute (now CAMH) in the mid 1980s, probably because I do not match either of their stereotypes, but was accepted by Russel Reid on our first meeting in late 1987, and had surgery from James Dalrymple some months later. I have mainly worked as an IT consultant. I have been with the same husband for 44 years.